ESCONDIDO  For most families with school-age children, walking or riding a bike to school is unheard of.

Today, fewer than 15 percent of children who live within a couple of miles of their school walk or bike, according to federal transportation statistics. The decline coincides with a rise in childhood obesity and poor air quality around schools, experts say.

But even if walking or biking is unrealistic for some, health, safety and education professionals want to make the routine of getting to and from school safer for everyone — children, parents, motorists and teachers.

That’s the goal of “Safe Routes to Schools,” a worldwide movement designed to increase the number of children who walk or ride a bike to school, while addressing health and environmental issues such as air pollution and traffic congestion. In the United States, federal and state Safe Routes programs provide funding for education and infrastructure improvements, such as sidewalks or pedestrian traffic signals.

Nowadays, the streets around a school on mornings and afternoons can look like an L.A. freeway, with cars idling in a blocks-long line. Children who do walk might be hiking along an unpaved shoulder and squeezing precariously between cars. Safe Routes supporters aim to change that.

Increasing safety around schools to encourage walking or biking was the subject of a recent forum, where participants learned about making changes in myriad ways, from simple and grass-roots to large-scale collaborations, whether it’s organizing walking groups or working with officials to improve roads.

The San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency brought national public health, planning and transportation expert Mark Fenton to Escondido 3-13to conduct a Safe Routes training forum for about 60 people from around North County and beyond, including educators, PTA members, representatives of public health agencies, and city planners

The Escondido Union School District will receive a state “Paving the Way to Safe Routes to School Grant” to support that mission through education and outreach. The district’s CARE Youth Project, a collaboration that works for a “safer and healthier Escondido,” applied for the $375,000 grant in October and is awaiting the funds.

“As we’ve been out at school sites, we’ve noticed kids are actually pretty good at following rules,” Israel said. “It’s the community that’s running red lights. The conversation’s starting in schools. But the reality is, they’re community issues.”

Fenton, who is unapologetically passionate about walkability and public health, started his visit at Mission Middle School to observe morning drop-off.

He buzzed around taking photos of the scene on busy, narrow Mission Avenue, as children darted across the roadway from nearby apartments, cars stacked up in two lines into the small driveway, and a crossing guard routinely faced cars ignoring a “no left turn” sign out of the school lot.

“The worst thing we can do is make pickup and drop-off faster and more convenient for cars,” Fenton told the dozen or so observers with him. “We really have to think about convenience versus safety.”

Safe Routes supporters may have to tackle the car-centric mindset of many parents, however.

Fenton’s two-hour presentation at the training forum focused on why the Safe Routes premise centers on what’s best for kids, not adults.

“Why am I such a lunatic about this? This is the first generation in American society that’s going to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents,” Fenton said. “That is completely unacceptable.”

Healthy children also means better academic performance and classroom behavior, he added.

Distance is the No. 1 reason given for not walking to school, Fenton said. Locally, children may attend outside their neighborhood under a transfer, parents might opt for a charter school across town, or teens might attend a high school because of a special program.

Traffic concerns are a close second reason that parents give for driving to school, and it’s “parents worried about traffic creating the traffic,” Fenton said.

Some solutions are big and long-term, such as traffic signals, sidewalk improvements, or additional crosswalks. But costly solutions aren’t the only answer, he said, encouraging community members to look around and start small.

One Safe Routes concept that Fenton urged people to consider was “remote alternative parking.” With remote parking, parents and bus drivers would use a space a short distance from school, like a nearby park or church parking lot.

Fenton told of a success story in a Missouri town that not only solved traffic congestion, it reinvigorated the park that students walked through to reach school. Students were noticeably better behaved after a brisk 10-minute walk, and the chaos of drop-off was eliminated.

The Safe Routes forum sent participants back to their cities and schools with tangible ideas.

“We really (wanted) to get them to the point where they have a couple of things to take away and get going and … to have a really good understanding of what Safe Routes is, how to look for funding,” said Jenel Lem, a community health promotions specialist with the county.

Sam Hasenin, a Vista traffic engineer, said the city is working on a comprehensive approach to Safe Routes. “This begins with reaching out to the community and understanding their needs through engaging them in activities that encourage walking and biking,” he said.